Thursday, August 13, 2009

I'm slowing becoming Swiss

The Swiss National Holiday is August 1. To celebrate, the city of Basel holds a fantastic fireworks display. And when I say fantastic, I mean it puts Stadium of Fire to shame. The Rhein river runs directly through the middle of town, so they bring two barges loaded with explosives into the river. We were on a bridge between the two barges.

The fireworks were utterly spectacular and Daniel slept through the whole thing, which is amazing in and of itself. Sarah fell asleep in the last half. Although children that are woken up by merely breathing near them who can sleep through explosions is a topic for one of those mysteries of the world post, that is not what we are talking about here.

No, we're talking about me becoming Swiss. As the sun started to go down, it started to cool down a bit. All the Swiss people around me were pullng on jackets. Their children bundled. My family is all in shorts and short sleeves. I start to be concerned that I'm freezing the children. Especially Daniel.

I, myself, begin to feel a chill and wonder if we should just go home so we don't freeze to death. Sarah starts complaining about her lack of jacket. I find a long sleeved shirt in the diaper bag and put it on my perfectly happy--yet must be freezing--baby. I mean, everyone around us is wearing jackets. It must be cold.

Then Sarah and I go for a walk. On our walk there is a sign with time and temperature. Temperature? 23 degrees. Celsius. That's 73.4 degrees farhenheit. Umm, the cold was all due to peer pressure.

I wonder what these people are going to wear when it's actually cold out.

(And just a note--the Swiss may love their jackets, but they are brilliant about celebrations. They hold the fireworks on July 31st so you can stay out watching them and because the 1st is the actual holiday you get that day off work. Brilliant, eh?)